White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘This is no cause for humour, Doctor.’ His cat-like smile and his generally light manner now infuriated her. He clearly subscribed to the fashionable opinion that the Russians were marvellous but all a little mad, and would not take her seriously. ‘If what you say is true I shall be forced to cancel my contract with the Ballets Russes and the company will lose millions of francs in bookings as a result – I shall probably be sued myself … it will be an absolute disaster for everyone.’

  ‘Forgive me, Madame. I appreciate you may be concerned about your commitments. Although I believe that Monsieur Diaghilev is quite accustomed to surviving difficulties with his artists. And you need not give up the stage quite yet … in the general way I advise mothers not to exert themselves, but at your age, in your state of health and as you have been in the habit of exercise it would be quite possible just to reduce the number of performances for a month and then retire.’

  ‘Retire! You must be mad. Retire? When I’m the toast of all Paris, my picture’s in every newspaper and I’m contracted for another four months for millions of francs! Millions, you understand! You’re wrong, you must be wrong.’

  He said nothing, but sat opposite her on the hard fake Louis XV chair, his elegant legs crossed, a sympathetic look in his grey eyes. She picked irritably at the edge of her white satin kimono, her mind in turmoil. There were ways to get rid of babies but she could hardly send to Petersburg for the Finnish witch to brew up something. The best course would be to ask for this man’s help. ‘Have you told my Nikolai – the Prince?’

  ‘No, Madame. I merely reassured him that you were not seriously ill.’

  ‘Well, that’s one thing. Now, what are we going to do about this?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘We can rejoice in the blessing of a new life and celebrate the miracle of creation, Madame.’

  ‘You can rejoice if you like, but I have no plans in that direction. I prefer to rejoice in bringing the great art of the dance back to France, where it truly began. I want to celebrate the miracle which happens on that stage every night, when the whole of the Opéra trembles in a unison of emotion. That, to me, is a real creation. Any village slut can fall down drunk under some halfwit and drop a baby nine months later. So, I ask again, what shall we do?’

  ‘I regret, Madame, that I am unable to help you.’ He reached for his hat and prepared to take his leave, but since he was still courteous and she was desperate, Lydia pressed him further.

  ‘I appreciate your sentiments, Doctor. You are obviously not a lover of art, but a man of religion, and I can admire that. I am sure, however, that you know of other members of your profession, or perhaps of an allied discipline, who are not quite of the same mind.’

  ‘I know there are such, but I regret that I cannot assist you …’ He walked to the door and she rose and ran after him, wanting very much to tell him to go to hell; however, he had one important area of power over her still.

  She clung to his arm and looked up with a pleading expression, well aware that the kimono had slipped off one of her shoulders. ‘You will not, at least, tell the Prince of my condition? I assure you he is of the same mind as me. We had resolved to have no more children, and I know he will be angry – I would at least like to choose the right moment to give him the news.’

  His eyes, which had appraised her so closely half an hour earlier, now skimmed over her as if she were some Gorgon capable of turning him to stone. ‘Everything that has passed between us is confidential, Madame.’

  ‘Of course. How wrong of me to even suspect that your principles were not of the highest in every respect.’

  Now thoroughly uncomfortable in the company of a woman he recognized as manipulative, hypocritical and immoral, the doctor bowed briefly and departed as fast as good manners allowed.

  Lydia returned to the couch and reclined prettily for Orlov, hoping that no sign of her inner turmoil would appear in her face. She felt a cold pit of despair opening under her feet. If she were pregnant she would lose her lover and her public by the same token. This life of acclaim and luxury would simply crumble to ashes in her hands, leaving her with nothing. Without her beauty she would be unable to attract another protector, and without her strength her career would reach an immediate end. In a year, as she saw it, she would be transformed from a gilded nymph into one of the shapeless bundles of rags who rolled drunkenly about the streets, begging by day, fighting by night, shuffling on wooden clogs and tied together with twine. Instead of basking in the love of princes and the adulation of all Europe, she would see people avert their eyes and hurry away when she approached. Her best hope would be to freeze to death quickly and unawares as soon as the winter came.

  When Orlov appeared a few moments later she banished her fearful musing and greeted him with a wistful smile. He was easily reassured that her indisposition was due to nothing more sinister than too much rich food. A squabble ensued, since anxiety had now made her hungry and she had a definite desire for an omelette Arnold Bennett, which he cherishingly vetoed as oozing with cheese sauce and thoroughly indigestible. She waited until he had left to call upon an aunt staying at the George V, ordered the omelette and had eaten half of it when Céline, her French maid, announced a telephone call from Diaghilev.

  ‘I heard you were unwell,’ he began without any particular pretence of sympathy. Suppressing a hiccup, she pushed the remains of the omelette aside and gestured to the maid to remove it, annoyed that she could not finish it and that Nikolai had been correct.

  ‘I am not unwell, Sergei Pavlovich. Are you sitting down? I am in excellent health, I have that on high authority, and I am also pregnant.’

  She was pleased to hear a horrified intake of breath at the other end of the line. This was the very man who would help to the utmost of his ability.

  ‘So – what shall we do about it?’ Now there was an exhalation of relief. ‘I can’t be more than a few weeks …’ Suddenly she remembered the night at her villa when she had seduced Leo and knew, with absolute certainty, that the child she was carrying was his. At once it took on a form in her mind’s eye, one of those serious, large-eyed little boys, with dark curly hair and rosy lips, the miraculous kind who never seemed to get dirty like their playmates. She saw this child ever present in the corners of her future, consoling and comforting, privy to all her feebleness, a confidant for all her secrets. The vision was hypnotically attractive. Once in her mind it would not leave, though she tried to squash it like a cockroach crushed underfoot. Diaghilev was speaking softly in her ear. Finally she sank her teeth into her own arm, desperate for a violent sensation to drive the picture away.

  ‘Are you all right? Has something happened? Lydia Alexandrovna, is everything …’

  ‘It was the dog, the damn thing nipped me. What were you saying?’

  ‘I was rather feebly protesting that this was a problem I had not encountered before …’ She caught a whiff of disdain for the female in all its manifestations and for a moment feared that he would terminate her contract out of sheer misogyny.

  ‘You cannot really expect me to believe that.’

  ‘It is true, alas. But I believe that among my acquaintance there may be someone to whom they are more familiar. Let me have a day, Lydia Alexandrovna, twenty-four hours, that’s all, I promise, trust me …’

  After a few farewells the line was cut. Lydia endured the day with difficulty, anxiety now increasing her sickness tenfold so that she was almost constantly ill. In her brief moments of clear-headedness she reflected that at least she had little opportunity to be infected by regrets.

  The following afternoon Diaghilev’s secretary, called to say that a Madame Arbeau would call upon her, and a few hours later the name was announced and a tall, slender woman with hollow cheeks, dressed in a plain but well-cut afternoon gown of aubergine silk and carrying a small carpet bag, presented herself.

  ‘I have had the honour to attend many of the most illustrious artists at the Opéra,’ she announced with a reassuring, conf
idential smile. ‘And many members of the aristocracy also. I am told that you believe that your condition is not long established?’

  ‘I do not think it can be more than two months or so.’

  ‘That’s very good. It may be that some tablets will be all that is necessary. May I be permitted to examine you?’

  From the bag she took out a white apron. She had cold hands and strong arms, and performed the same manoeuvre as the doctor without causing quite so much pain. ‘I agree, two months seems quite correct. This will be simple.’ The apron was briskly removed, for all the world as if she were a cook finished with making pastry, and tucked back in the bag, from which she then removed a plain white pillbox.

  ‘Take two of these tonight. They should produce some painful cramps, for which I regret that you should not take any remedy at all, especially not laudanum or any spirits. Just be brave, bite a piece of leather if you like, if it helps, and soon it will all be over. Shortly afterwards you should see some blood, actually quite a significant amount. If you do not, take a larger dose one week later – three or four. You have enough here. That should be all that is necessary. Then you should feel quite well, because it is a natural process that we activate this way.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame. You have saved so much of my life with this little box, you can’t imagine …’

  ‘It is nothing, just my calling to help sisters in distress, Madame. Life is hard enough for a woman, I see no justice in the curse of Eve. I will leave you my card in case you should perhaps wish to recommend me to anyone.’

  With a self-effacing gesture she slipped the small piece of pasteboard into a silver dish on a side table. It described Madame Arbeau as a corsetière. ‘You are very elegant,’ Lydia remarked with curiosity.

  ‘Well, I could hardly walk through the streets in my apron, now could I?’

  As soon as she was alone Lydia opened the pillbox. Within were ten white tablets the size of peas. She decided to leave nothing to chance, and take four of them immediately.

  They had no engagement that evening, and she was due to leave early in the morning. Orlov returned at six, looking forward to a few peaceful hours in her company and hoping to find her recovered. She was able to sustain a bright conversation for half an hour before a terrible pain wrenched her bowels and she doubled up on the sofa. ‘Oh God! I feel like the water the blacksmith puts the red-hot horseshoes in! I’m going to boil, I know it! Aaaargh!’

  He leaped to his feet, upsetting the ice bucket which had cooled their last champagne in Paris. ‘Céline! Fetch the doctor immediately!’

  ‘No! Céline, stay where you are. I promise you, my love, this is just what he warned me to expect. I won’t have the poor man dragged away from his family on my account. He said just a few hours of pain and everything would be fine.’

  ‘But my precious one – I can’t bear to see you suffer so.’ Protestations of this kind were not his best speeches. He stood awkwardly at her side, wondering if he should touch her or not.

  ‘Then please, if you love me, leave me alone now. We have to part tomorrow and I won’t have you remember me like this.’

  With a few more entreaties she drove him away to his own room, then lay on the bed and screamed into the pillow until the convulsions passed.

  In the morning she was as white as a corpse, with deep mauve circles under her eyes, and he kissed her tenderly and held her tightly to his chest on the platform at the Gare du Nord where the boat train for London stood releasing little columns of steam into the cool air.

  ‘Four weeks of separation – how shall I bear it?’ She said this with all sincerity, feeling desperately unprotected now that they had to part and she was destined for a country whose people she did not know and whose language she had never learned. He was obliged to stay in Paris for another month, and then planned to travel to the Villa Cassandra where she would join him in a few days. The next phase of her engagement with the Ballets Russes was to be a tour of Germany in the autumn.

  ‘Always remember that I love you,’ he said suddenly, his flat voice at odds with the words. Her frailty, when she was always brimming with crass vitality, struck at his heart. He felt as if he had deceived a child. ‘Always, my darling. Nothing gives me more pain than to know that I have given you cause to doubt me. I shall never do so again. God forgive me if any action of mine should ever injure you.’

  She looked deeply into his eyes, defended by lids narrowed in emotion, and saw that he was sincere. ‘You knew what was in my heart, then?’

  ‘I confess that I did. I knew I had wounded you, which I regret more than I can say. It – she – it was all of no consequence, except that you were hurt by my actions, which was unforgivable.’

  ‘Not so.’ She reached up to stroke his head lightly with her fingertips. It was the moment to be sweet and in any case she had not the strength for harshness. ‘I have forgiven you, Niki. You are so dear to me, I can’t be angry with you for ever. However shall I live without you?’

  ‘The time will pass quickly. You will have a big success in London, and you’ll forget me while you’re counting all your bouquets. And I shall write to you often, and telephone you if I can. A new country, new people to meet, that will make the days pass, surely?’

  ‘Nothing can compare with the happiness of being with you.’ This was said in a feeble whisper as an involuntary shudder passed through her body. He tenderly accompanied her to her compartment and saw her comfortably installed. Her last glimpse of him was an aloof figure among the gay well-wishers on the platform, waving stiffly, the morning sun polishing his noble forehead with its pale rays.

  The Channel crossing made the entire company as sick as dogs. Lydia found the London public as enthusiastic, although nowhere near as refined, as her Parisian admirers, but away from the stage she found the city oppressive. The Savoy in London was grimy and noisy compared to the Ritz in Paris, and her dressing room at Covent Garden too cold and clinical to feel comfortable. Her pains past, the nausea seemingly also overcome, she quickly regained the greater part of her strength and even managed to lose a little weight, since the London food was disagreeable in every way.

  The show of blood did not appear. She went on stage in perpetual fear of a scarlet flood breaking out and disgracing them all, but nothing happened. In accordance with Madame Arbeau’s instructions she took four more of the pills on a night when she was not scheduled to dance, and suffered if anything more severe agonies than before.

  Another week passed and still no bleeding took place. Now fierce anxiety took hold of her and she awoke before dawn every morning in a frenzy of panic. Her dancing suffered, for she was now always tired, but the London crowd was an unrefined mob who seemed to detect no difference. Her sense of isolation deepened. Few members of the company spoke English, and they were all the more bound to each other by their common languages, so that by the third week of the season the majority hardly ventured outside the Savoy hotel except to travel to their rehearsal room, a dreary, drill hall in Bloomsbury, and to Covent Garden in the evenings when they were performing.

  In this enclosed atmosphere the news that the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been shot in Sarajevo, had little impact. They did not remark the few stern faces about the opera house, nor the subdued mood of their audience that evening, and Leo, ever ready to consider himself the intellectual of the group, pronounced The Times’opinion that the assassination had shaken the conscience of the world to be a typically militaristic British delusion.

  Lydia was surprised when a yellow telegram envelope arrived with her breakfast tray. The message was from Orlov, announcing that he had been ordered back to Petersburg but hoped to be in Monte Carlo as soon as possible, and did not want her to change her plans. She had scarcely read it when Céline announced a telephone call from him.

  ‘Pray to God this is merely an alarm and will soon be forgotten.’ The line hissed so badly she could hardly make out his words. ‘The Balkans are a perpetual wasps�
�nest and now it has been broken open in a big way. I hope it will all die down. Are you well, my darling?’

  ‘I feel well now but this climate does not agree with me. And we are a big success, just as you predicted.’

  ‘God keep you safe,’ was his answer and despite the poor connection she did not miss the note of apprehension in his voice.

  Their final performance in England was also a matter of tradition, a private engagement in the presence of the Dowager Queen Alexandra of England. Their English patron, the Marchioness of Ripon, had erected a beautiful little theatre in her ballroom at Coombe House for the event, designed by Bakst in his favourite green and deep blue – bleu Bakst was currently a very fashionable colour all over Europe.

  Gwladys Ripon was a woman who spread serenity around her. The soul of loyalty and generosity herself, she seemed to extract the best from everyone who entered her charmed circle. Even Diaghilev, who knew full well that she had welcomed Nijinsky and his new wife with equal hospitality only a few weeks earlier, was unable to reproach her once inside her aura of harmony.

  The dancing, this time Les Sylphides with both Lydia and Tata partnering Massine, was over in the early evening, but the women were begged not to change their long romantic tutus for an hour or so, so that the guests might enjoy the effect of the ghostly white figures drifting among the French parterres in the garden. The evening was one of those soft July nights in England which are made to seem unreal by the random gusts of wind and sudden draughts of cool air which are a prelude to a storm. A few days earlier they had witnessed the worst thunderstorm in living memory in London; four inches of rain had fallen in three hours, and several people had been killed.